How to change notification profiles on BlackBerry 10

On BlackBerry 10, notification profiles are still around, though the Loud and Medium profiles are now gone. It also isn't as simple as selecting a speaker icon on the homescreen to change the profiles either. In order to change them you have to dive further into the settings -- although going between Normal and Silent is quick and easy. Contiinue reading see how to change Notification Profiles on BlackBerry 10.

To change notification profiles:

Tap Settings from the homescreen or from dropdown menu

Tap Notifications

Tap Mode to display the dropdown options and select desired profile from there

To toggle between Normal and last used Profile:

Swipe down from the top bezel in the homescreen

Tap Notifications to toggle between Normal and your last used profile

By default, this option toggles between Normal and Silent mode.

That's it. That's how to change the notification profiles on BlackBerry 10. If you have keyboard sounds on for the Normal Profile, change to either Silent of Vibrate will turn off the keyboard sounds too. Note that the volume keys on the side control media and game sounds, independent of notification sounds.

Reader comments

How to change notification profiles on BlackBerry 10

There's an easier way to change to other profiles. Instead of going to settings and tapping notifications, you can just tap the word notification in the dropdown menu. This saves you some swiping depending on what screen you have your settings icon on

Hello All...Tapping the above mentioned Icon does in fact just change between last two profiles, similar to holding the "Q" key on older BBerry models such as the tourch, however actually tapping on the word "Notifications" will open the notifications setting.. by playing with the drop down area in the BB 10 you will find a few of the six settings available will work in the same manner...Some toggle while others open settings

@BlackBerry: Please bring back the custom profiles. I miss the old system. I can't get my head around on how to make set notifications for specific email/contacts. One of the reasons I had a BlackBerry was because of the custom notifications. I've been using a Z10 for a week one and I have no clue on what setting to use and/or how to customize it. Bring back the feature in OS10.1

If I understand you correctly, you can indeed set a custom tone/noise/mp3/etc for a specific person. Go to their name in your Z10 contact list and edit it. At the bottom are selections to set custom tones for phone and email.

Kind of and I appreciate your help. But this doesn't compare to what we had before where you can COMPLETELY customize it (Vibration, Vibration Speed, LED Light, Tone, Volume, Holster, ect)

Instead of innovation, it feels like we went into the exact opposite direction. I hope maybe in 10.1, BlackBerry will make it as simple as from the drop down menu, click the Notification icon and give us the same features as past OSs.

Personally, that was my favourite feature and really hope that they bring it back.

I agree. Blackberry notification profile functionality keeps getting worse and worse with every new operating system. The old functionality (pre OS 7) was the best. OS 7 was tolerable and I could get by. Now you really just have the very basics which you find on every other smartphone in the market.... Hopefully we'll get some upgraded notification functionality in an OS upgrade very, very soon!

yes, the Z10 notification options are too limited. the Bold 9900 features were excellent customisation of notification.
please add the 9900 selection to the OS10.
also, there is no holster mute option or detailing.

yeah disappointing. especially at work where i dont want it OFF and i dont want it normal, i want to be able to have it at a different level as Im in an open plan office. Hopefully the upgrades will allow this.

I really miss being able to have specific contacts assigned to a custom profile instead of a custom tone for individual contacts. It was a much better way but it's been missing for several years now so I guess it's not coming back.

So here's what they got wrong: using the volume buttons to toggle in and out of silent shouldn't make Silent the toggle when you touch the icon. Then it would be easy to switch between Normal and Vibrate using the toggle icon, and from either of those in and out of Silent (for meetings and such) using the volume buttons. This would make my life a lot easier!

I really hope that BB can bring back all the features from the OS7 profile into bb10 .. this has been my biggest issue with the phone .. I used to have a custom work profile but now I have to change the setting on one of the existing profiles to match those settings.

Its proving a real issue for me too. I've upgraded to Q10 from Curve. In my last phone it was so simple to click the speaker icon and select a profile. But the main issue is that I had 2 personalised profiles. One was for workplace and one for bedside. As a military mum it is imperative that I am able to have a profile for bedside which allows myson to get in touch anytime day or night. This needs to include texts and whatsapp as well as calls, all at a much reduced volume. Right now I have to chose bedside mode allowing calls only, otherwise if left on normal every text etc comes through at full volume scaring me half to death!

I have had a Z10 for just over two weeks now and I thought I was going mad when I had turned the notifications to vibrate but I would still hear a whatsapp or BBM come through...
Berry is meant to be the ultimate business handset and the Z10 the premier of this category - how professional do I feel spending all day trying to stop the sound of my messages coming through. I am dissapointed that one swipe or placing the phone on its front or placing it in its holster (anything) does not activate silence for my Berry...
Knowing my luck its too late to take it back and subscribe to an iPhone or to a Samsung...

How about custom profiles when the device is in its holster? With my Curve 8900 I would prioritize which notifications I wanted to be audible and which ones I wanted to vibrate. Hopefully BlackBerry will address this.

I really dislike that the side volume buttons change your profile even when the phone is locked. So many times I have accidentally turned my phone to silent or to full sound while it was in my pocket by accidentally hitting a button. I really need BlackBerry to change this! It's actually my biggest complaint about the phone haha!

This profile feature is really NOT good! Aside from all the above comments, when you switch profiles you STILL need to manually adjust the volume of the ringtone. For example, i do not want to use "bedside mode" because i actually want to receive phone calls at night. So i tried using "phone calls only" however, this over-rides the blinking LED, which i do not want. As i skimmed through all the settings while in phone calls only mode, i noticed many things were set to vibrate, again which i did not want. So i changed them all back to off. Well the next morning when i switch back to Normal mode, ALL THE VIBES WERE STILL OFF!!! Frustrating beyond belief! It makes me think i have a screwed up berry. Is anyone else experiencing this problem? Maybe my software is pooched! Because OS7 was PERRRRFECT! The profiles feature on every other berry before this was SO customizeable and worked awesome! I'd be even willing to PAY for an app to have that feature back. (And yes, i have paid $2 for the one in app world and it's not quite up to snuff either).

Bad news for me... I work on call - I need a good night's sleep and be able to receive phone calls (and not have to worry about screwing with vibration settings etc.). This could postpone my purchase until fixed

I miss the holster features. The auto bedside mode with phone only. Seems like we are losing many awesome features for a few new ones. I love some things on the phone but I am finding more and more missing features

I know this is not the full os 7.1 settings but there is holster settings.
1.Goto the phone icon and tap to open.
2.Swipe down from the top and select settings and you will find holster
3.Tap it and you have two choices answer a call by removing device and end call by putting device back in holster.

This combined with custom ring tone and message tones in contact settings when in edit mode helps.

Not very useful but at least some holster settings are there. I'm sure most people are referring to the custom profiles based on whether the device is in the holster or not. For example, with my previous Bold 9930, for the in holster mode I would choose vibrate only for all incoming notification types except for phone calls.

Has anyone else noticed when you set the mode to vibrate only that you still get audio as well? When i switch from normal to vibrate my phone call notification works properly, but for bbms i still have sounds too.... and both bbms and phone calls are set up the same way in the vibrate profile.... if it is even a profile

I agree with most posters here...profiles in BB10 are horrible!
1: You can't set Bedside Mode to activate automatically when on the charger
2: Bedside Mode turns off phone ringer too (not cool)
3: Without Bedside Mode I now get woken by emails all night long
4: No ability to set email volume low, while leaving phone volume high
5: No custom profiles

And 6 is just a minior inconvenience (as we can download ringtones), but the pre-loaded ringtone selection is extremely boring.

Seriously BlackBerry, what the hell? You know, everyone complained about BlackBerry, and they continued to lose market share...hence the need for BB10. But all along I was content with BB 7 and earlier. I know the UI wasn't flashy, but it did what I needed to to do, and it did it VERY well. Reasons like lackluster profile options is one of the many reasons I stayed away from the other mobile platforms. Now BlackBerry has given consumers what they've asked for, but unfortunately the diehard fans like us are not overly happy.

That aside, I generally really like BB10. Battery life sucks, and I wish the keyboard version was out by now; but for the most part I'm quite happy. The lack of notification customization really pisses me off though.

agreed, what was BB thinking by putting a skippy notification options. its very annoying to have an excellent Q10 phone with these blatant shortcomings. i really hope BB has a fast OTA expanded notification upgrade.
And the native ringtones are a grand total of a few electro sounds???
How could this get the final launch OK ???

Totally not a fan of the volume buttons working even when locked. I can't take the phone out of my holster without pressing the volume buttons and find myself checking and re-checking to see if the volume has went up.

the custom profiles were the reason I stayed with BB. I love being able to set text and phone only at night. It really helps when you need to hear the phone or a text for emergency purposes. Hope they read and bring it back. Is there an app that can be downloaded for custom profiles?

BB10 notifier profile implementation plain sucks. What the heck were they thinking? I'm having buyers' remorse big time right now. Being able to let the phone filter my notifications according to email was the #1 thing that benefited me in the past. #1!! Nothing is more important. Sure it's great to be able to do that by contact, but what about when I just simply want to know when I have a support email, or a new customer? I need to be able to assign a different ring tone to each email account. Even better would be having this ability assignable by filtering subject or body text for custom strings in addition to per-account.

HBJen I have read a few mentions about HUB++ but also that there is some problem where it can't assign custom profiles to "WORK" email accounts. I haven't gotten that far yet.. still don't know how to separate work and home, guess I better make sure they are all set to HOME, even the work ones, so that I can at least get that basic functionality back with HUB++

I just picked up the z10 this afternoon. The phone is going back tomorrow for this reason. How can blackberry get rid of the custom profiles? I really like the phone but the profile issue is a deal breaker for me.

I have found HUB++, which supports not only separate notifications for email accounts but also for subject /body text filter matching. It also let's you change the LED color and sequence. I think BlackBerry will fix this but I don't see them adding filters or custom LED sequences.. so I'd just grab that if that's your main complaint.

Back in the day of the good old Blackberrys, I used to be able to set up my profiles with "Exceptions".
I would set up my profile to "Silent" and define "Exceptions" for people who I wanted to pick up the phone from. All others would go to voicemail. It was extremely handy.
Unknown people would get voicemail-because I never heard them call- but pick up when, say my boss called because he was the "Exception" list the phone would ring.
Worked great.
I was hanging in there with the contact profiles on the previous generation, but the new operating system allows no filtering whatsoever. Can you bring back "Exceptions"?

CrackBerry is in no way Affiliated with BlackBerry. We take pride in our unbiased content, however do occasionally receive free products from vendors that we review or discuss. For more info click here.